Melissa James is a mother of three, living in a beach suburb in New South Wales, Australia. A former nurse, waitress, shop assistant, perfume and chocolate demonstratorâamong other thingsâshe believes in taking on new jobs for the fun experience. Sheâll try anything at least once, to see what it feels likeâa fact that scares her family on regular occasions. She fell into writing by accident, when her husband brought home an article stating how much a famous romance author earned, and she thought, I can do that! She can be found most mornings walking and swimming at her local beach with her husband, or every afternoon running around to her kidsâ sporting hobbies, while dreaming of flying, scuba diving, belaying down a cave or over a cliffâanywhere her characters are at the time!
Donât miss Melissaâs next spellbinding storyTHE SHEIKHâS DESTINYJuly 2010
Broome, North-Western Australia
ALL day the heat had been like a headache, pulsing and thick with moisture. The local Aboriginal clans called this âknock-âem-downâ seasonâthe clouds were a dark-and-brilliant tapestry covering the sky, and the rumbling thunder, lightning forking across the beach, brought the entire landscape to fascinating, terrifying life. Then at last the wild storms came, the unrelenting rain fell, cutting off the entire Kimberley region from the rest of the world, apart from a few brave souls that ventured here on the one highway that stayed open. The shops all closed in the town from just after New Year to the start of February, apart from grocery and the petrol stations, the resorts and the odd souvenir store.
Her little grocery/souvenir shop stayed open for those few tourists who came in. It opened at seven a.m., and stayed open until seven at night. She had to fill her life with something, right?
Anna Westâsoon to be Curran once againâwalked along the beach toward the small apartment sheâd taken five months ago. Cable Beach was her favourite place in the world. Dazzling creamy-white sands were littered with rocks and stunning aqua water, and sometimes, not as often as the famed Monkey Mia beach, but sometimes the dolphins came so close to the shore you could pat them, and the whales swam past on a journey to and from the Antarctic, leaping from the crystalline water to give tantalising glimpses of long, sleek, grey beauty, their family lives evident in their care for their little onesâ¦
Donât think about it, not on this of all days.
She wiped the sweat running down her face and kept walking, her eyes blinded to the beauty. Sheâd look again tomorrow, love it then as she always had. Not today. One year sinceâ
Anna knew she shouldnât be alone today. She had plenty of places to go, if she wanted to.
âCome to Perth, Anna. You can stay with me as long as you want to. Youâll have total peace and quiet hereâbut you wonât be alone,â Sapphie told her during every call, in that gentle yet insistent way of hers. Sapphie, her long-time best friend from their boarding-school days, the daughter of Jarndirriâs former housekeeper, would never give up until Anna came.
âCome to Yurraji, Anna,â her sister, Lea, would say. âYou donât need to run that stupid shopâBroomeâs got twenty of them alreadyâbut youâve only got one niece. Molly needs to see her only auntâand you should be with your family now.â
Anna knew that beneath Leaâs gruff, commanding toneâso much like their dadâsâwas a world of anxiety she felt for her little sister. She could never say âI love you, I miss youâ, and especially not âIâm scared for youâ. Lea was a fighter, not a loverâbut it was in every call, in every unspoken word.
Yurraji was the property Granddad had left Lea. It lay in the wildest, most remote part of Western Australia where brumbies, the wild horses, still ran free, and Lea could gentle them and give them a sanctuary. Anna could spend a week, a month or whatever she neededâand sheâd never find a place more peaceful, or farther away from gossip and speculation.
Both Lea and Sapphie called every evening to check on her, as theyâd done for the past year, bearing with her monosyllabic replies with more patience and love than she had a right to expect. Their calls made the long, lonely evenings bearable, and yetâ¦